Over the course of the last several days, the weapons research company Fluid Gravity Engineering (http://www.fluidgravity.co.uk/ ) based on market street, St Andrews, had their front door locks glued repeatedly in an act of industrial sabotage.

In the dead of the night, whilst the inept pigs of Fife constabulary slept, we snuck through the winding maze of corridors that the fairground presented, to liberally apply a quality adhesive product to the numerous shiny locks of the FGE building in St. Andrews. Fluid Gravity Engineering are contracted by the military-industrial complex, in order to help design better and more efficient “defence technology” (or tools of murder as they are known to you and I) to be used in the wars and occupations that rage all over the Earth, thereby not only helping to kill and maim countless innocent men, women and children, but also making a tidy little profit while they´re at it.

The University of St Andrews has for a long time been the recruiting ground for institutions which fill the pockets of the rich and the powerful. From weapons of financial carnage invented by greedy bankers, to weapons of mass destruction developed by greedy scientists; the call of money has always rung through the halls of St Andrews. This call continues to ring true as ever and Fluid Gravity Engineering continues to heed it.

Capitalisms perverse stench knows no boundaries, neither moral nor physical and as a result we find ourselves on a daily baisis confronted with its many tendrils; in St Andrews it adopts the form of FGE, many here not even being aware of the existence of this blight, let alone its presence in the very heart of St Andrews. Elsewhere, too, the cancer spreads: in nearby Glenrothes the arms giant Raytheon thrives, and across the water at Leuchars, the soon-to-be ex-RAF base prepares to greet a new wave of starry-eyed recruits, ready to be sent to their deaths and those of their hapless victims.

This will not go on. Every rifle comes from a factory and every bullet has its maker. Where the capitalist-military machine raises its head, we will be there to greet it with the hammer of resistance (and the super-glue of solidarity).

By Anonymous

By Anonymous

Speak a language that isn't bourgeois to perpetuate class war, perhaps? The message is simple and St. Andrews is doing it well just try and make things easier to understand for everyone:

A company based in elite St. Andrews is playing a role in the war industry by providing services that allow the testing of, among other things, ballistic missiles and ammunition. We're engaged in not only a long-lasting war between classes but also major state wars perpetuated by our country against others.

Fluid Gravity play a minor role in the war industry and, equally, St. Andrews plays a minor role in UK wide relations. However, criminal damage in St. Andrews may be fitting whilst for those in Brighton, with the weight of parts of the community behind them, smashing up EDO's headquarters makes sense.

I hope that actions like these shall spur on those hoping to disarm DSEi this autumn.

Good luck and stay safe.

Since when has complex language been bourgeois? By that standard, nearly every anarchist author in the 1800's was a bourgeois, along with marx and anyone else that talks on an intelletual level above that which YOU judge to be above that of your average joe. Stop talking for the masses mate!

By Anonymous

Speak a language that isn't bourgeois to perpetuate class war, perhaps? The message is simple and St. Andrews is doing it well just try and make things easier to understand for everyone:

A company based in elite St. Andrews is playing a role in the war industry by providing services that allow the testing of, among other things, ballistic missiles and ammunition. We're engaged in not only a long-lasting war between classes but also major state wars perpetuated by our country against others.

Fluid Gravity play a minor role in the war industry and, equally, St. Andrews plays a minor role in UK wide relations. However, criminal damage in St. Andrews may be fitting whilst for those in Brighton, with the weight of parts of the community behind them, smashing up EDO's headquarters makes sense.

I hope that actions like these shall spur on those hoping to disarm DSEi this autumn.

By SAT 1

Everything must be manufactured somewhere. The strength of capitalist systems lies in making sure production rings remain separate: specialization. In Adam Smith's needle factory everyone fulfills their function without needing to understand any other function, but contributing nonetheless to the overall production of needles.

Thus the production of arms obeys similar rules. FGE's productive niche, however, is not a material one. They produce knowledge, an essential component of a modern army. They produce models, designed for a wealth of purposes: to model the behaviour of blast wave-fronts within structures; a muzzle flash from a mobile missile system; the trajectory of a ballistic device like an artillery shell or the interaction between a flame-front and a shock wave like you might get during a carpet-bombing.

Outsourcing this development serves multiple purposes. It allows larger weapons corporations to spend less money on weapons development, preferring to buy cost-efficient models developed in St Andrews. It also allows the State to understand the effect of their weaponry on target populations. For example, FGE have modeled the effect of a bunker-busting device on civilian dwellings. This allows the State to decide whether this kind of munition is best suited to targeting civilian populations. Without FGE the MOD would have to open a branch just to research this kind of event.

Specialisation is not just cost-efficient though. It also allows the State to compartementalise the production and reproduction of oppressive power relations-- key elements of its survival. Artificially creating a distinction between 'offensive' and 'defensive' armies allows for the effect of internal disagreement to be mitigated. The 'Left' can call to end this or that war of aggression, but by the rules established within the spectacle of the State cannot call for the dissolution of the military itself or for the destruction of armed forces altogether. This means that militaristic structures are maintained, which in turn ensure the continuation of the State in its present form. This way whether anti-war or pro-war have the upper hand in a changing political landscape militarism never looses its foothold in the culture.

St Andrews has long occupied this position in the spectacle. Because of its idyllic scenery, ancient buildings and innocuous attractions such as the Old Course, it provides a safe haven for those involved in the darker underside of the propagation of the capitalist state. Here the pervasive myth that our society is at peace with itself is strongest, and the reality of class war hidden under a carpet of academia and bourgeois entertainment. FGE thrives in this environment, allowing for young minds to be involved in the arms trade without exposing its real effects on the world.